Nonviolence

The Center for Nonviolent Communication

• We help people connect across differences and transform conflict one conversation at a time using Nonviolent Communication, the Language of Life.

• The Center for Nonviolent Communication is an international nonprofit peacemaking organization. We believe that everyone’s needs matter and dialogue can resolve differences peacefully. Every day we support learners, trainers, and change agents around the world to create an environment where everyone's needs matter.

• History: The organization was founded in 1984 by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg (1934-2015), a clinical psychologist from the U.S. He first developed Nonviolent Communication in the 1960s in federally-funded school integration projects, where he provided mediation and communication skills training. For several decades, Dr. Rosenberg traveled the globe, sharing peacemaking skills in more than 40 countries. "What I want in my life is compassion, a flow between myself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart" 

  • • Book: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of LIfe - "If "violent" means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then much of how we communicate could indeed be called "violent" communication."

Center for Nonviolent Conflict Research

Father John’s Beatitudes Center For The Nonviolent Jesus 

• The purpose of this organization is to teach and promote the nonviolence of Jesus, to help end violence and to create a new culture of nonviolence through workshops, podcasts, and conferences. 

• Podcast "The Nonviolent Jesus"  Join Morro Bay local Fr. John Dear, priest, author, activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, for weekly thought-provoking 30 minute visits with visionary leaders, daring to reclaim the radical, active nonviolence of Jesus. Rooted in the wisdom of Gandhi and Dr. King, this journey isn't just about changing the world, it's about transforming ourselves. If peacemaking, nonviolence, and advocating for spiritual truth and social justice is your jam, this podcast is for you! 

• Other links to non-violent actions from Father John’s Beatitudes Center For The Nonviolent Jesus can be found here: The Beatitudes Are A Call To Nonviolent Action 

MK Gandhi Institute fo Non-violence

The Peace Alliance

The King Center

• Our mission is to empower people to create a just, humane, equitable and peaceful world by applying Dr. King’s nonviolent philosophy and methodology (Nonviolence365). 

Martin Luther King Gandhi Organization

• The MLK-Gandhi Organization has been a beacon of hope and social change, blending the philosophies of two of history's greatest leaders: Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.

• Our organization has made remarkable strides in promoting nonviolent social justice, equality, and community empowerment. Through countless campaigns, we’ve successfully advocated for civil rights, economic justice, and educational equity, working to create a world where freedom and dignity are upheld for all.

• We've also facilitated global peace-building initiatives, bringing communities together to resolve conflicts and promote understanding. Our legacy continues to inspire generations, empowering individuals to take action for positive change, rooted in the principles of love, peace, and justice.

Resistance

Resistance Lab: Virtual Organizing Training 101 / Pramila Jayapal

• Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal represents Washington's 7th Congressional District, which encompasses most of Seattle, WA and its surrounding areas. She and her team have come up with a coordinated resistance strategy with free virtual training sessions called Resistance Lab. Their goals are to help people understand how democracies fall and the most effective resistance movements that have challenged authoritarians and dictators; to turn anger, fear and frustration into action in the short-term, while also preparing for a coordinated resistance movement for the longer term; and to build community across the country that can help grow the movement. 

Inspiration

DON'T THINK OF AN ELEPHANT - George Lakoff

• Berkeley Linguistics Professor. His book, Don't Think Of An Elephant, makes the case that conservatives are winning the language wars, and maps out a guide for progressives on how they can improve their message. 

• This video link is a one hour talk by George Lakoff about his theory, and I found it to be so fascinating. These are the culture changes that need to be focussed on in America in order to undo the decades of coordinated "framing" we have been subjected to by conservative nationalists.  

Mindful Activism: The Power of Mindfulness in the Streets

How might a formal mindfulness practice of sitting or walking with non-judgmental attention on the body and mind in the present moment enhance the effectiveness of activists and movements? Three areas are promising: maintaining nonviolent discipline, supporting movement integrity, and integrating personal and political transformation. Click link to learn more.

TIMOTHY SNYDER

• An American historian of Europe and a public intellectual on both continents. His work inspires art and music, and is read at protests around the world. Here are his best action guidelines, taken from his book, "On Tyranny", rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. It is meant for courageous and creative dissenters, protestors and oppositionists.... just like you and me! Pass it on! TWENTY LESSONS 

Misc topics

THE SCIENCE BEHIND TRUMP’S DANGEROUS PERSONALITY DISORDER 

• A friend sent me this very informative article about the severity of Trump's mental illness, and he actually scores 33 (dangerously high) on the psychosis rating scale (no surprise!). Many prominent American psychiatric professionals have been issuing dire warnings... for YEARS.... but their voices have been squashed, and legacy media ignores them. It's a bit of a read, but very enlightening if you're interested in what we're truly up against.

Let America Be America Again ~ by Langston Hughes

Esquire Magazine 1938

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!

[James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes’s first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature. Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in “Montage of a Dream Deferred.” His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable black poets of the period—Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen—Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself. In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has been renamed “Langston Hughes Place.” In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless works of prose, including the well-known “Simple” books: Simple Speaks His Mind, Simple Stakes a Claim,Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple’s Uncle Sam. He edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography (The Big Sea) and co-wrote the play Mule Bone with Zora Neale Hurston.]